Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren to conduct Pirelli test

Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren will test wet-weather tyres for Pirelli at the Paul Ricard circuit later this month.

The three teams will conduct a two-day test for F1’s official tyre supplier which will be solely focused on running different specifications of wet weather tyres. The Paul Ricard circuit is equipped with sprinklers for the purpose of wet weather testing.

The driver line-up for the test has not yet confirmed. Unlike the post-season test which took place at Yas Marina at the end of last season, members of the media will be invited to attend.

@bascb Anytime any team turns a single wheel on track they will learn something. Not to mention it would be incredibly hard to police bits on the car. Teams wouldn’t be doing it if they weren’t going to get something out of it.

Interesting part is why the whole grid wasn’t invited to the test, sure some teams wouldn’t bother because of cost but surely Pirelli would want as many teams running as possible in order to gather as much data as possible.

@woodyd91, Who says they weren’t invited? I remember an article about this test quite a while ago saying a couple of teams didn’t thought it made sense for them to be there.
Nothing unfair going on here, it’s not a secret test like Mercedes’ test a couple of years ago. I’d imagine most of the teams are invited to at least send one of their own people to see if anything suspicious is going on.

At the moment we only know that 3 teams will be taking part, just happens to be 3 of the big teams on the grid, now I couldn’t imagine Mercedes for example passing up the chance to put the car on track, especially if their main rivals would be doing so and given how the burnt up their tyres in the wet/drying conditions in Texas, maybe they did but I personally don’t see it happening.

Nothing unfair going on here

If the whole grid were invited and the rest of the teams decided not to attend then no nothing unfair is going on because they all had the same opportunity to learn something, which of course the teams will. However if they weren’t invited to take part then of course that is unfair on the teams who aren’t taking part. That much is pretty clear because you will learn something about your car when you put it on the track.

Let’s wait and see, I’m sure people will do some digging around to see if team were or weren’t invited or how teams were selected if that wasn’t the case.

@woodyd91, Nothing stopping you from doing some digging of your own. And don’t you think teams would have publicly complained if they heard about a tire test which they weren’t invited to? Like I said, i’m pretty sure I read an article about teams not wanting to participate. I’ll see if I can provide it..

The test will take place on Jan. 25-26 next year, using 2015 cars, and all teams have been invited to participate. The whole two days will be devoted to wet running, using the circuit’s sprinkler system.

“You only need one car to do the test we’re doing. We’ve extended it to everyone, if they all want to come, it’s good.”

I have been having a look around, nothing is being said at the moment regarding how teams were selected or how many teams were invited.

And don’t you think teams would have publicly complained if they heard about a tire test which they weren’t invited to?

Given the test was only just confirmed and the legal implications about complaining about a test that hadn’t been confirmed I’m sure most teams would hold off with any public statement about the test until it was official they wouldn’t be taking part.

I remember an article from Autosport back in the summer saying that all teams would be invited to take part in the test but in reality only a small number of teams would take part, i.e the teams with enough money to be able to afford an additional day of testing. Now if we look at teams who will be attending, all of the them have money, there are no small or mid field teams on a tight budget, the only team who isn’t attending who has money is Mercedes. Like I say Mercedes may very well of been invited and turned down the chance but that doesn’t seem all that likely. Especially with Mercedes history with tyres.

The test will take place on Jan. 25-26 next year, using 2015 cars, and all teams have been invited to participate. The whole two days will be devoted to wet running, using the circuit’s sprinkler system.
“You only need one car to do the test we’re doing. We’ve extended it to everyone, if they all want to come, it’s good.”

This is along the similar lines of what Autosport reported a little bit earlier, however it doesn’t have a quote from Mercedes or any team saying they don’t want to participate.

I should just say that I’m not saying other teams weren’t invited to test, what I’m saying is I’m waiting for an official statement from Pirelli saying all teams were officially invited to attend, then that will be put to bed. Then I would assume reporters will be asking Mercedes for a statement as to why they turned down the chance to attend the test.

I’m surprised Mercedes didn’t attend and give the chance of wet F1 running to e.g. Wehrlein and Ocon. I wonder if we will see Vandoorne for McLaren. Vergne would be an excellent driver for Ferrari to gain further wet running data, given his pace in the wet, although they could also use Leclerc. Red Bull could send Gasly.

I think its more or less about who can afford to do a test where they will learn relatively little @woodyd91, @me4me between the teams. I can imagine that there was some kind of informal agreement that Mercedes would sit out this test for some reason (hm, what could that be?). And its likely that Pirelli was not inclined to let team like Manor, Lotus, Sauber, Force India run drivers who just came up with a budget to buy a day of running to make sure that they get solid feedback from it.

Then again, its also possible that all teams wanted to take place but Pirelli held a pull to decide which 3 teams would be called upon, because its very ineffective to build some 20 sets of test tyres for one test. Others would then be chosen for further tests.

And to come back to the amount of information gathered, yes, every team will learn something, and because its Pirelli that will pay the majority of the cost involved, even little is fine. On the other hand, running on wet tyres is somewhat less fruitfull, unless F1 actually starts running races and sessions in the rain again!

I see no need for paranoia here. At some point some testing has to be done. These teams can afford it and can provide useful feedback. It is highly likely the teams will not be informed fully of what tires they are on nor will ever know whether the tires they just did 20 laps on will even be actually used in 2016. They will be driving 2015 cars. Merc won’t be there probably as a collectively wise decision so as to eliminate any chance of favouritism rumours.

I say nothing to see here wrt advantage or favouritism. Just a crucial test for Pirelli in an atmosphere of extremely little actual on-track testing these days.

At some point this test is necessary and any advantage will be so minuscule it is not worth mentioning. They either don’t test at all, or they force every team to be at the test. Neither of those options makes sense, so they have to commit to something somehow at some point, and the best scenario to take care of any paranoia is that Merc not be there. This is just a necessary test being conducted in the most sensible way possible.

It went deeper than the one person and was known of by a few team members. Anyway that it was something occuring over more than 1 race I hold it to be the greatest instance of team cheating. This is of course a personal opinion and some people will of course disagree.

They will be using 2015 cars presumably? I don’t imagine any of those teams would want to give anything away this close to testing and Pirelli would need to be using recent machinery to get representative data.

2015 cars being used is a fact especially when one considers that even if a few teams had 2016 cars ready, they’d be on such a steep slope of the learning curve that they couldn’t very well used to do analysis on tires. Not when they’d still be learning so much about the new cars and their behaviour on different setups.

I’m going to assume that this test will not have the teams knowing exactly what tires they’re on in terms of softness etc. Of course they will know when they are on full wets or inters, but that doesn’t mean they’ll know the compounds nor whether or not the tires they just ran are actually going to be used in 2016. Ie. I’m confident the test will be quite neutral, especially since they will be in 2015 cars, but since there is going to be a percentage of folks that will be paranoid about this I would suggest they likely agreed it would be best Mercedes not attend, a decision Merc, I’ll assume, was on board with.

They are specifically testing wet tyres @robbie. Either Pirelli has various compounds they are comparing to each other to choos which is best suited or its just one type and making sure it actually does what it should be. As only one type will bre picked (by Pirelli) there is not too much use in knowing how hard or soft the version they ran on was.

Can anyone explain why only three teams are participating? ($)
How they were chosen? ($)
And verify that the test will be with the 2015 cars?
Why are the Merc powered teams excluded? I’d have thought Williams would be wanting to be there!